One of the most powerful techniques for reproducing nanostructures—i.e. structures in the order of 100 nm or smaller—is nanoimprint lithography (NIL). In nanoimprint lithography an inverted copy of the surface pattern of a template—often called a stamp—is transferred into an object, comprising a substrate and, applied thereto, a film of a moldable layer often called resist, e.g. a polymer material. After heating the object to a suitable temperature above the glass transition temperature of the polymer film the stamp is pressed towards the film followed by cooling and release—often called demolding—of the stamp, after the desired pattern depth has been transferred into the film. Alternatively, the substrate is covered by a photo-resist material, i.e. a polymer which is sensitive to radiation such that it is cross-linked upon exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation, or a pre-polymer which is cured into a polymer upon exposure to radiation. This requires that either the substrate or the stamp is transparent to the applied radiation. In a subsequently performed process after the achieved imprint, the object—comprising the substrate and the patterned polymer film—can be post-processed e.g. by etching of the substrate within the imprinted regions to transfer the pattern to a target surface of the substrate.
The imprint process described above exhibits some difficulties, which have to be considered in order to achieve a perfect pattern transfer from the template into the moldable layer covering the substrate.
If the template and the substrate are not made of the same material, which they generally are not, they will typically have different thermal expansion coefficients. This means that during heating and cooling of the template and the substrate, the extent of expansion and contraction will be different. Even though the dimensional change is small, it may be devastating in an imprint process, since the features of the pattern to be transferred are in the order of micrometers or even nanometers. The result may therefore be reduced replication fidelity.
Very often an inflexible stamp or substrate material is used, and this can lead to the inclusion of air between the stamp and the moldable layer when the stamp is pressed towards the substrate, also downgrading the replication fidelity. Furthermore, inclusion of particles between the stamp and the moldable layer during an imprint process can lead to pronounced damages of either the stamp or the substrate especially when neither the stamp nor the substrate are composed of a flexible material. Physical damage to the stamp or the substrate or both can also be caused upon demolding of an inflexible stamp from an inflexible substrate, and it is difficult to demold a substrate and a template including patterns with high aspect ratio after an imprint process. A once damaged stamp is usually not recyclable.